Here we go again- Pearls

I start rehearsing a new show a week from Monday. It's Michele Lowe's String of Pearls. Six women play 20-some roles. I was asked to audition and wasn't thrilled about the script, but I love the director and really respect her work. (Really respect her work.) She offered me a part in the cast and it would have been stupid to turn her down. Now that I've spent more time with the script, I realize it would have been stupid in more ways than one.

With our travels and wedding prep, I've neglected doing the necessary work for these parts. But once the 26th hits, my life will revolve around this show. That's just how theater works. So like the many things that consume my thoughts, I will do a lot of musings here. Some will be about the characters (insights, what I'm trying, what works, what doesn't) and of course probably discussion on the other actresses. It is an all woman show. I like these. I like the atmosphere they create. Throw in one man and everything changes. In the past, I've had really good experiences. I hope I do so again.


I'm going to refer to the show as SOP (or Pearls) so that I don't have to write out the name. Also so I don't pop up on google reader. Paranoid? Yes please.

I guess this is all introduction to what I really wanted to write. This week I plan to read the entire script every day. Begrudgingly I sat down this morning and began. What surprised me is how many times the characters brought me to tears. Not my characters, but a few of the others. I understood for the first time the real significance of what these characters were saying. I understood the female struggles the script portrays. Husbands lost through cheating or death. Friends lost through betrayal or death. It's a script that discusses that which we can lose but then sprinkles in that which we can gain.

It's a script that did not connect with me for the first dozen reads. What now has changed? I do not know. And how will this all translate to the stage? Another question I cannot answer. But it is a relief to me somehow that I have fallen in love with the words and that they are beginning to speak to me and hopefully eventually through me.